Suicide net gets funding positive recommendation from MTC

Although the Golden Gate Bridge, Highway and Transportation District approved a funding plan for a $76 million suicide net and pitched in $20 million of its own, last month, it still has to collect some of the rest of the money.

On Wednesday, it took an important step toward pocketing $27 million when it won the recommendation of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission’s Programming and Allocations Committee. The full commission will consider awarding the funding at its July 23 meeting.

“It’s pretty hard to believe it took 40 years to get here,” said San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener, a commissioner. He called the bridge’s status as a suicide magnet “a scar’ on its beauty and fame.

Last year 46 people leapt to their deaths from the bridge, and an estimated 1,600 have killed themselves by jumping from the span since it opened 77 years ago.

As they have for decades, family members of bridge suicide victims urged the committee to approve the funding. Many of them displayed photos of their loved ones, and some choked up and struggled to hold back tears.

“I know if there had been a net, he wouldn’t have jumped,” said Patricia Richards, whose husband Dan jumped over the 41/2-foot bridge railing in 2010.